The Rare Films of Max Linder DVD contains mostly early films from 1905 to 1912. To give this some chronological perspective, keep in mind that by the time Mack Sennett founded Keystone Studios in 1912, Linder had already made a couple of hundred films. In 1913, Sennett hired Chaplin, who did not debut his tramp character until the following year. As for Keaton, his first film appearance wasn't until 1917, when he had a role in Fatty Arbuckle's The Butcher Boy.

So Linder was pretty much on his own, ahead of his time and far from Hollywood, in the beginning grinding out a film a day for Pathé in Paris. In the process, he pretty much invented the comic narrative film. While early filmmakers often used gags as their subject matter (see these previous posts), it was Linder who developed a recognizable character — that of an often inebriated Paris dandy — and began to develop stories around him. The first movies were nothing more than simple gag ideas, but over time Linder developed his foppish character, his storytelling skills, and his use of film language.

By the time you get to Linder's "feature-length" films (about an hour long), the artistic progress is very much in evidence. Now working in Hollywood and Paris, his fame eclipsed by Chaplin, Linder is still somewhat ahead of his time in shooting features.

The Making of The Tortoise & The Hare, Audio Commentary for Tortoise & The Hare, Alternate Ending for How to Bridge a Gorge.

Disc 2:

Featurettes

The Hollywood Walk of Fame, The Livingstone Statue, The Clifton's Cafeteria Reunion, In The Credits, An Evening With Ray Harryhausen, The Bronzes, The Ted Newsom Interview, The Academy Archive Restoration, Filmmuseum Berlin.

This DVD collection features a cornucopia of early - and, in many cases, extremely rare - baseball films, offering privileged peeks into early twentieth century American lifestyles and values. It includes newly remastered and scored versions of two important early baseball features: The Busher (1919), a delightful comedy-drama featuring silent cinema legends Charles Ray, Colleen Moore, and John Gilbert; and Headin' Home (1920), spotlighting a young, shockingly svelte Babe Ruth in his first motion picture starring role. Other items include Casey at the Bat or The Fate of a "Rotten" Umpire (1899), one of the first representations of baseball on celluloid; a 1922 experimental sound film featuring aging matinee idol DeWolf Hopper reciting "Casey at the Bat" Hearts and Diamonds (1914), a comedy with roly-poly screen star John Bunny; One Touch of Nature (1917), which features New York Giants Hall of Fame manager John McGraw; and Felix Saves the Day (1922), an animated short starring Felix the Cat. His Last Game (1909) and The Ball Player and the Bandit (1912) blend baseball with the American West.

So kick off your spikes, slip on your favorite baseball cap, and prepare to be transported to an earlier, more innocent age.- Rob Edelman

1. The Oval Portrait (1934), directed by Richard L. Bare (18 minutes, 29 seconds)
Bare, who went on to direct episodes of "The Twilight Zone," "Green Acres," "Alias Smith and Jones" and "Petticoat Junction," here adapts an Edgar Allan Poe short story about an obsessed artist. Silent, with orchestral accompaniment.

2. 1:42.08 - A Man and His Car (1966), directed by George Lucas (Seven minutes, 20 seconds)
Lucas, of whom you may have heard, has three short films included. This one wordlessly shows a man testing out a race car.

3. Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB (1967), directed by George Lucas (15 minutes, eight seconds)
This future-shock short was a dry run for Lucas's feature debut.

4. Freiheit (1966), directed by George Lucas (Two minutes, 48 seconds)
This brief short stars Lucas's college roommate, future director Randal Kleiser, as a young man mysteriously gunned down in a field.

5. The Lift (1972), directed by Robert Zemeckis (Seven minutes, 21 seconds)
In this surrealistic short, an apartment elevator takes on a mind of its own.

6. A Field of Honor (1973), directed by Robert Zemeckis (14 minutes, 15 seconds)
Winner of a Student Academy Award, this absurdist comedy follows a recently discharged Vietnam Vet as he leaves a mental institution only to find himself overwhelmed by combat-crazed civilians.

7. Silent Night (year unknown), directed by James Foley, Jr. (21 minutes, one second)
Two mental hospital attendants spend Christmas Eve caring for a group of patients and arguing with each other. Foley went on to direct David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross... and nothing else nearly of that caliber.

8. Proof (1980), directed by Kevin Reynolds (23 minutes, 46 seconds)
This short led to Reynolds' 1984 feature debut, Fandango. Proof follows a group of buddies on a road trip, as one of the more timid souls is tricked into going skydiving.

9. Perfect Alibi (1989), directed by Steve Sommers (20 minutes, 17 seconds)
The arty story of a failed pickpocket trapped in a time loop (a la Groundhog Day) until he can successfully pull off a complicated burglary.

Disc Two
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10. Whatever It Takes (1988), directed by Jon Turteltaub (20 minutes, 16 seconds)
A quirkily ambitious mixture of romantic comedy, drama and musical, Whatever It Takes focuses on a couple who move to Los Angeles in order to make it in the music business.

11. Broken Record (year unknown), directed by Shawn Levy (28 minutes, 50 seconds)
Overlong comedy about two teenagers determined to get into the Guinness Book of World Records.

12. The Goodbye Place (1996), directed by Richard Kelly (Eight minutes, 47 seconds)
This spooky black-and-white short by Richard ("Donnie Darko") Kelly rounds out the set in a most unsettling way. An abused child is offered escape by a clutch of mysterious strangers who may or may not know where missing children truly disappear to.

Rivers of Sand (1974)

The people portrayed in this film are called Hamar. They dwell in the thorny scrubland of southwestern Ethiopia. They are isolated by some distant choice that now limits their movement and defines their condition. In their isolation, they seemed to have refined this not uncommon principle of social organization to a remarkably pure state. At least until recently, it has resulted in their retaining a highly traditional way of life. Part of that tradition was the open, even flamboyant, acknowledgement of male supremacy.

Hamar men are masters and their women are slaves. The film is an attempt to disclose not only the activities of the Hamar, but also the effect on mood and behavior, of a life governed by sexual inequality.

Statement by the filmmaker:

My first choice as a title for the film that became Rivers of Sand was Creatures of Pain. Though it seemed at the time to evoke most aptly the central theme of the work, I was persuaded by friends not to use it. They felt, perhaps correctly, that it was too somber, too susceptible to wrong interpretation. But what I heard in those words is what I felt as I made the film: the anguish of an ordeal and a process by which men and women accommodate each other in the midst of conflict and tension caused by fidelity to their culture's values.

The people portrayed in this film are called Hamar. They dwell in the thorny scrubland of southwestern Ethiopia, about one hundred miles north of Lake Rudolph, Africa's great inland sea. They are isolated by some distant choice that now limits their movement and defines their condition. At least until recently, it has resulted in their retaining a highly traditional way of life.

Hamar women eagerly accept their ritual whipping when boys come of age. Part of that tradition was the open, even flamboyant, observance of male supremacy. In their isolation, they seemed to have refined this not uncommon principle of social organization into a remarkably pure state. Hamar men are masters and their women are slaves. The film tries to disclose the effect on mood and behavior of lives governed by the idea of sexual inequality.

Once Upon a Time . . . “Rome Open City,” a 2006 documentary on the making of this historic film, featuring rare archival material and footage of Anna Magnani, Federico Fellini, Ingrid Bergman, and many others

New video interviews with Rossellini scholar Adriano Aprà

Rossellini and the City, a new visual essay by film scholar Mark Shiel (Italian Neorealism: Rebuilding the Cinematic City) on Rossellini’s use of the urban landscape in the war trilogy

New video interview with film critic and Rossellini friend Father Virgilio Fantuzzi, who discusses the filmmaker and the role of religion in Rome Open City

In this compilation, which comprises Monoloog van Fumiyo Ikeda op het einde van Ottone/Ottone, Rosa and Tippeke, each of the three films succeeds in coceiving the power of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's work. This is achieved not by recording the dances step-by-step, but by considering them from a totally different perspective: the filmic point-of-view. However, in this case, perhaps one shouldn't speak of "film-adaptation".
While these productions use De Keersmaeker's stage performances as inspiration, they are nevertheless fully autonomous works that deserve to be looked at as films in their own right.

RR (2007)

“The film is called RR, but I like to call it “Railroad,” because RR sounds like a pirate movie.”
— James Benning

RR is two hours of watching one train after another go by, all in their entirety. Filmed in various spots around the United States—though several locations, to this viewer's eye, were obviously in California (Benning teaches at Cal Arts)—the span of time it takes each train to cross the screen depends on the number of its cars as well as its speed. As with people, some trains are fast while others are annoyingly slow. Though he's limited by a camera that never moves, Benning manages to pull off a number of witty flourishes—as when he has us wait for an idling suburban driver, who has himself been waiting with us in real time, to drive over a reopened track, before jumping to the next choo-choo.

Robert W Paul is justly celebrated as the leading pioneer of British film and one of the founders of world cinema. Concentrating first on actuality films, he soon branched out, pioneering almost every kind of film from documentary to fiction and fantasy. This unique DVD collection of 62 films, many preserved by the BFI National Archive, represents an attempt to bring together for the first time the collected output of R W Paul and his studio.
Paul produced what is arguably the first British narrative film A Soldier's Courtship (1896, now lost), and in 1898 became the first man to edit two scenes together in Come Along, Do!. With the help of former magician Walter Booth, he created elaborate fantasies in the mould of George Mlis such as The '?' Motorist (1906), in which an animated motorcar drives off into space and round the rings of Saturn.
In addition to popular comedies, dramas, and elaborate trick films, this collection contains one of only two surviving films of the disaster caused by the launch of HMS Albion; some of the first films shot in Spain, Portugal, Egypt and Sweden, including frontline reporting from the Anglo-Boer War; Paul's famous record of the 1896 Derby and extensive coverage of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee procession. These, and the numerous actuality films that Paul made, show day-to-day life in Victorian London.
These rare films are presented with a brand new musical accompaniment by celebrated pianist Stephen Horne.

Extras
* Commentary by film historian and author Professor Ian Christie ( Birkbeck College, London), whose forthcoming book The Time Traveller: Robert Paul and the Early Moving Picture Business will be published by Chicago University Press at the end of 2007
* Illustrated 24-page booklet with an essay by Ian Christie and an introduction to each of the films